VANESSA REDGRAVE, POLITICAL ACTIVISM IN ARTS

Today, The Grandma has been watching some films performanced by Vanessa Redgrave, one of her favourite actresses and a great activist in political and environment causes.

Vanessa Redgrave CBE, born 30 January 1937, is an English actress of stage, screen and television, and a political activist. She is a 2003 American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee, and received the 2010 BAFTA Fellowship.

Redgrave rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since starred in more than 35 productions in London's West End and on Broadway, winning the 1984 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Revival for The Aspern Papers, and the 2003 Tony Award for Best Actress in a play for the revival of Long Day's Journey into Night. She also received Tony nominations for The Year of Magical Thinking and Driving Miss Daisy.

On screen, she has starred in scores of films and is a six-time Oscar nominee, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the title role in the film Julia (1977). Her other nominations were for Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), Isadora (1968), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), The Bostonians (1984) and Howards End (1992). Among her other films are A Man for All Seasons (1966), Blowup (1966), Camelot (1967), The Devils (1971), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Prick Up Your Ears (1987), Mission: Impossible (1996), Atonement (2007), Coriolanus (2011) and The Butler (2013).

Redgrave was proclaimed by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams as the greatest living actress of our times, and has won the Oscar, Emmy, Tony, BAFTA, Olivier, Cannes, Golden Globe, and the Screen Actors Guild awards.

More information: ANSA

A member of the Redgrave family of actors, she is the daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and Lady Redgrave, the actress Rachel Kempson, the sister of Lynn Redgrave and Corin Redgrave, the mother of actresses Joely Richardson and Natasha Richardson, the aunt of British actress Jemma Redgrave, and the mother-in-law of actor Liam Neeson.

Redgrave was born on 30 January 1937 in Blackheath, London, the daughter of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson.

In her autobiography, Redgrave recalls the East End and Coventry Blitzes among her earliest memories. Following the East End Blitz, Redgrave relocated with her family to Herefordshire before returning to London in 1943. She was educated at the Alice Ottley School, Worcester, and Queen's Gate School, London, before coming out as a debutante. Her siblings, Lynn Redgrave and Corin Redgrave, were also acclaimed actors.

Vanessa Redgrave entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1954. She first appeared in the West End, playing opposite her brother, in 1958.

In 1959, she appeared at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre under the direction of Peter Hall as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream opposite Charles Laughton as Bottom and Coriolanus opposite Laurence Olivier, in the title role, Albert Finney and Edith Evans.

In 1960, Redgrave had her first starring role in Robert Bolt's The Tiger and the Horse, in which she co-starred with her father. In 1961, she played Rosalind in As You Like It for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1962, she played Imogen in Cymbeline . In 1966, Redgrave created the role of Jean Brodie in the Donald Albery production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Reunited with Karel Reisz for the biographical film of dancer Isadora Duncan in Isadora (1968), her portrayal of Duncan led her gaining a National Society of Film Critics' Award for Best Actress, a second Prize for the Best Female Performance at the Cannes Film Festival, along with a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

More information: Macau Daily Times

In the same period came other portrayals of historical figures, ranging from Andromache in The Trojan Women (1971) to the lead in Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), the latter earning her a third Oscar nomination. She also played the role of Guinevere in the film Camelot (1967), and briefly as Sylvia Pankhurst in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969). She portrayed the character of Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges in The Devils (1971), the once controversial film directed by Ken Russell.

Later film roles include those of suffragist Olive Chancellor in The Bostonians, transsexual tennis player Renée Richards in Second Serve (1986), Blanche Hudson in the television remake of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1991), Mrs. Wilcox in Howards End (1992); crime boss Max in Mission: Impossible (1996); Oscar Wilde’s mother in Wilde (1997); Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway (1997); and Dr. Sonia Wick in Girl, Interrupted (1999). Many of these roles and others garnered her widespread accolades.

Her performance as a lesbian mourning the loss of her longtime partner in the HBO series If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000) earned her a Golden Globe for Best TV Series Supporting Actress, as well as earning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a TV Film or Miniseries.

In 2006, Redgrave starred opposite Peter O'Toole in the film Venus. In 2008, Redgrave appeared as a narrator in an Arts Alliance production, Identity of the Soul. In 2009, Redgrave starred in the BBC remake of The Day of the Triffids, with her daughter Joely Richardson.

In the midst of losing her daughter, Natasha Richardson, Redgrave signed on to play Eleanor of Aquitaine in Ridley Scott's version of Robin Hood (2010), which began filming shortly after Natasha's death. She was next seen in Letters to Juliet opposite her husband Franco Nero.

More information: People

She had small roles in Eva (2009), as well as in Julian Schnabel's Palestinian drama Miral (2010). She voiced the character of Winnie the Giant Tortoise in the environmental animated film Animals United (also 2010), and played a supporting role in the Bosnia-set political drama, The Whistleblower (2010). Redgrave also narrated Patrick Keiller's semi-fictional documentary, Robinson in Ruins (2010).

She also played leading roles in two historical films: Shakespeare's Coriolanus, in which she plays Volumnia; and Roland Emmerich's Anonymous (both 2011), as Queen Elizabeth I.

Since 2012, Redgrave has narrated the BBC series Call The Midwife.

Vanessa Redgrave's activism is also known. In 1961, Redgrave was an active member of the Committee of 100 and its working group. Redgrave and her brother Corin joined the Workers Revolutionary Party in the 1970s.

In 1995, Redgrave was elected to serve as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

In 2004, Vanessa Redgrave and her brother Corin Redgrave launched the Peace and Progress Party, which campaigned against the Iraq War and for human rights. Redgrave has been an outspoken critic of the war on terrorism. During a June 2005 interview on Larry King Live, Redgrave was challenged on this criticism and on her political views.

In March 2014, Redgrave took part in a protest outside Pentonville Prison in North London after new prison regulations were introduced which forbade sending books to prisoners.

In 2017 Redgrave made her directorial debut with the movie Sea Sorrow, a documentary about the European migrant crisis and the plight of migrants encamped outside Calais, France trying to reach Britain. She has heavily criticized the exclusionary policy of the British government towards refugees, stating that the British Government ...has violated these principles (of the Declaration of Human Rights) and it continues to do so, which I find deeply shameful. The UN signed the Declaration of Human Rights and now we have to employ lawyers to take the government to court to force them to obey the law. Just thinking about that makes my mind go berserk.”

More information: Xinhua Net

 

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Vanessa Redgrave